Thailand - IOM’s IOM X Campaign, along with its partners USAID, the U.S. Embassy Singapore and Microsoft, yesterday presented the findings from IOM X Connect Singapore – its pilot outreach project aimed at raising public awareness for the issue of human trafficking in Singapore.

Aided by the new IOM X Learn, Act and Share app created by IOM X and Microsoft, a group of seven students from National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore Management University (SMU) took to the streets to discover Singaporeans’ awareness of human trafficking, by engaging 100 members of the public in a fun and interactive quiz that tested their knowledge of human trafficking and exploitation.

Findings revealed that while majority of Singaporeans (75 percent) knew the correct definition of human trafficking, only half of them (50 percent) were able to correctly identify who could be a potential victim of human trafficking.

In addition, when asked about the total number of human trafficking victims globally, the majority of the respondents underestimated the gravity of the issue, with the average response coming up to only 11 million, which equates to around half (53 percent) of the actual 20.9 million victims globally.

“While the findings from IOM X Connect Singapore revealed broad understanding of human trafficking and exploitation in Singapore, the severity of the issue has been largely underestimated. Human trafficking continues to impact countries all over the world including Singapore, and we believe that by driving widespread public awareness and support to counter this, we will be able to help prevent exploitation and better protect the victims at large. We are delighted to see how the use of technology and the app have helped us to gain quick insights into the public’s understanding of the issue, and this information will help us to design better activities and messages that are relevant to the rest of the ASEAN community,” said IOM X Program Leader Tara Dermott.

The ‘IOM Learn, Act and Share’ app is now available for download at the Windows Store, and has the potential to be re-versioned and scaled for further awareness-raising activities in the ASEAN region.

Following the presentation of IOM X Connect Singapore findings, IOM X engaged Microsoft, the U.S. Embassy Singapore and actress Eunice Olsen, in a panel discussion on leveraging new technology solutions for human trafficking prevention, protection and prosecution.

Highlights included a look at Microsoft’s PhotoDNA technology, which is a free service that creates a unique fingerprint-like signature for images that can subsequently be used to identify images of trafficked victims online and lead to the removal of these images, as well as IOM and Microsoft’s 6Degree.org, the first crowd-funding portal that enables the public to directly support the sustainable reintegration of individual human trafficking victims.

IOM X is IOM’s innovative campaign to prevent human trafficking and exploitation, funded by USAID.

For further information, and to download high-resolution photos and a video of the outreach event, please contact Mia Barrett at IOM Bangkok, Email: mbarrett@iom.int, Tel: +66.847052114 or visit IOMX.pr.co.